tBLzpw comment6 ,

Just wanna say hallo to all!

Can whoever "Jim" is, please have the courtesy of identify yourself with a last name and running club affiliation, so you don't get confused with us "other Jims" who didn't write the note.

Thanks,

Jim Gulla
President Sandown Rogue Runners

Edited by author 12-09-2008 03:58 PM
Jim,

What volunteer work are you going to be doing for next year's Mill Cities Relay? Perhaps you can handle the timing all by yourself, freeing up Dave and the rest of the volunteers so that they can run the race themselves?

I have timed the race several times for Yankee Timing and it is the single most complicated race to time I have ever worked --- and I have timed at least 500 races in the past 7 years. Changing timing companies, using chips, or summoning a voodoo priestess would not speed up the process for a number of reasons:

1 - Unlike most races, the organizers and clubs involved do not want the overall team winners to be known until the award ceremony. They do not post the results until AFTER the overall team champions have been announced. Even if we had the results 30 minutes earlier, we would not have posted them.

2 - Given the fact that there have been several ties (that needed tie-breakers calculated) over the years and that even the last place team can score points for their club, we can't even calculate the winning teams until the very last team has crossed the line.

3 - Every year we are informed of changes to teams AFTER the team has finished that need to be edited in the scoring program before we can calculate the winning teams.

4 - Every year we have at least one team that has bent the rules in some way and gets DQ'd from the overall scoring. The race committee meets quickly to decide on these, but then their decision has to be edited in the scoring program before we can calculate the winning teams. (The DQs are not caused by teams trying to cheat, but are instead caused by injuries, car accidents, etc. As a matter of fact they are usually reported by DQ'd team themselves.)

Michael Amarello
Yankee Timing

P.S. I expect to see a sincere apoligy from you --- with your full name attached --- on this forum soon and look forward to your volunteering to work at the finish line for next year's event!!!

Jim, I trust you did find ALL the results on Cool Running yesterday AM. This is a complicated event to score, with many variables coming into play. The last thing the committee would want to do is award the trophy and then find out later that some qliche in the scoring resulted in us having to re-award it to another team, NOW that would be bad.

In the mean time I trust you enjoyed your day. I know our club provides FREE entry. Now think about that. For FREE, you get a well manged course, miles marked, FREE FOOD, a giveaway, band, DJ. If you are Patriot fan you got to see the New York football Giants get creamed by the Eagles Just a whole lot of FUN!

I believe it was around 1:15 when we started the awards ceremony. We had planned it to be 1:00, not too bad.

Not everything "runs" according to plan. The most inportant thing is to get the results out accurately, and that I believe we did.

Dave LaBrode
Benevolent Ruler
Andover Striders

Edited by author 12-08-2008 07:13 PM
Jim- Said <<< It's hard to believe that after 25 years of running this race it still takes forever to tally the scores.

Could be you are joking but the bad wrap that timing companies regularly get when the problems are almost entirely caused by other sources is a sore point with me, so I'll assume you are serious.

Of the things that happen to delay results, what percentage in your considered and informed opinion do think are attributable to the skills of the timing company?

And what percentage do you think are the result of the volunteers who write down incorrect numbers or team captains who change team category designation without telling the scoring people or who try to pull a fast one by bending the rules.

There was one delay that happened that I'm aware of. They did not want to consider the results correct without checking out things that seemed odd.

Dave Camire had to take time to search through 2 floors of people to find me to ask why my team had no recorded finish time. He could have just blindly taken the data as fed to him (or not fed to him in this case) but he, like most of the timing companies, does not want the results to be incorrect. I told him that since my other team members were in the car that hit a pole in Hudson they never got to the Sunshine start. Fortunately no one was hurt.

I did not bother to tell him that we didn't start as I had other things on my mind. Thankfully for the event, Dave was doing his best to find and fix all issues that were not his causing.

Edited by author 12-15-2008 02:10 PM
Jim,
We posted the results right after the award's ceremony. I would hardly call it a debacle since we were only 15 minutes later then we had planned. BTW my company, Yankee Timing, has been scoring the event for the past 25 years and we timed yesterday's race for free. What did you do for the relay yesterday other then insult me?
Dave Camire
MCR Commissioner
Yankee Timing President

Did the timing company ever manage to post the results yesterday? It was 1:45PM when I left and still no nothing but a promise that it would be coming soon. It's hard to believe that after 25 years of running this race it still takes forever to tally the scores. I vote that Granite State Racing Service handle the scoring next year.

Despite that awards/scoring debacle everything else was superb!!! A big thanks to all the volunteers.

To add to Dave's comment regarding portajohns. If the race is postponed in the event of snow, we still pay the rental fee for the portajohns and then must rent them again in February, or whenever the race is rescheduled to. It can get costly and I am in favor in keeping the entry fee at $12.00. As far as waiting in line to use the facilities, I've never been at a race where that didn't happen!

Second comment: "...not really a fan of long speeches by people they don't know getting awards for reasons they don't understand"
Please read the following: "Annually the Mill Cities Alliance recognizes a citizen of the local running community with the Phil Quinn Award for making extraordinary contributions to our sport....their dedication, support, commitment and passion for running have improved the sport immensely."
I hope this explains the award and enlightens the person who made this comment.

Edited by author 12-11-2007 10:02 AM
John Gorvin passed along the following input to this year's relay from SRR. Thanks for the effort John. I've added my comments at the end.

O’Donnell bridge

It all went well early on; the team did a great job
stopping traffic so bulk of the field could cross
without breaking stride.

Issues arose approximately 9:55am or so when timing of
runners and lights got very out of synch and traffic
backed up much too far on Mammoth Rd (coming towards
the bridge). Many drivers grew impatient and starting
running lights randomly.

Fearing (a) an accident and (b) complaints the race
was holding up traffic, we had to change strategies,
and let traffic flow normally with lights and instead
stopped the runners until way was clear.

Traffic back up quickly abated, and the runners did
not seem to mind. Hopefully no drivers will call
town/police to complain.

compliments

great race! One of my top three races of the year!

Big thanks for marking the miles on the roads this year - that was great to have some sense of where we were on the course.

It was great to have a porto-o-potty at the transition!

bathrooms

More porto-potties at the interchanges, please. There was only one at the 3rd interchange.

more bathroom options. There was a really long line at the 3 leg
and none at start of final leg

One suggestion based a long line with lots of seemingly non-runners in it - maybe gently suggest "those running leg 4 get priority." I had to pee in the non-existent woods; I didn't have the guts to ask to cut.

The one thing that would make it even better would be additional portajohns. Some of the female members of my team found the long lines for a single facility less than perfect. I know it would cost a bit more, but runners would appreciate at least two portajohns at each exchange.

A porta-potty at the first Exchange point (there are lots of runners both waiting around and finishing at the interchange, and there really isn’t private or secluded space to empty out)

Exchange zones

Some general directives to clubs next year about the handoff process. The exchanges were often clumsy and some exchangers were oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the path of other runners right behind them. Perhaps some minimum width for the exchange area might help.

Directions

My only suggestion for the future would be improved directions on the site to get to each of the exchange points - two people on my team got lost trying to drive from home directly to various exchange zones.

Finish

water when you come in after final leg. It took me forever to
figure out where the water was and then how to get up to the second
floor to get it

Food

I really liked the set up with soup downstairs and the rest of the food upstairs. Kept the line a lot shorter!

The way they spread out the food to include the downstairs really helped minimize the lines this year

Batons

If there’s any way to replace the traditional baton with something similar to RTB, that would be great. I did see a number of people who found various ways to carry the baton other than in their hands but unfortunately, I wasn’t as creative. And I do hate running with anything in my hands.

Awards

Seemed to be a much longer wait until the start of the awards ceremony this year. People are really not a fan of long speeches by people they don't know, getting awards for reasons they don't understand.

----------------------------------------------------------- -------------
Here are my comments

O'Donnell Bridge -- We have two very tough intersectons on the route: the O'Donnell Bridge and the University Bridge. A special thanks goes to SRR and NHAA for handling this tough assignment.

Bathrooms -- We did add a porta-john to the third exchange this year. However Glenn Stewart from GLRR had to spend a lot of time securing permits from the state to make this happen. Hopefully this will not be such a production next year since we now have a procedure to follow. There is also a Dunkin Donuts directly across the street from exchange three that appreciates the business the relay brings. We could probably add a porta-john to exchange four since we have permission to use Griffin Brook Park. However keep in mind that there are folks who do not want porta-johns on their property. I have no idea if this is possible for exchange zone one. This is something the committee will need to address. Also keep in mind that porta-johns are expensive. The committee goes through great pains to keep the cost of this event at $12/person. Cost is a factor particularly when you consider that almost every club picks-up the fee for their teams. Raising the fee to cover additional porta-johns will put a strain on your club's budget.

Exchange zones -- These are well marked and we have no plans to police them. It is up to the clubs to educate there teams on hand-off protocol. I guess it is true that common sense is not all the common.

Directions -- Good points and this will be improve on the website for next year.

Finish -- Good points here. The water should be distributed to each food station to make it easier to find.

Batons -- A relay without batons is like Aunt Jemima pancakes without the syrup or the spring without the fall.

Awards -- The last team finished at 12:09 and the awards started at 12:45. This is a very complex race to score and it takes a few minutes to tabultate and validate the team scores. My suggestion to the committee is to start the awards at 1:00 PM next year. This is an end-of-year social and rushing things defeats that purpose also rushing the results increases the chance for mistakes. BTW the results were done earlier than 12:45, but a team disqualified itself a few minutes before we were going to start the ceremony causing everything to be retabulated. As for the speeches being too long -- how would anyone even have noticed since most people in the audience never shut-up during the entire ceremony!

Hi Dave C. and Dave K,

I just wanted to followup and say thank you from TriFury/MVS for making the changes this year related to number pickup and the final leg adjusted final starting time. I really appreciate that you listened to feedback and took action to improve things. It made for a much better experience for our teams.

Dave

Ed, click on "2007 Team Entries" on the home page of the Mill Cities Relay website (www.millcities.com). This will bring you to the list of entered teams.